Of the possible times when it would be good for Daybreak and the EverQuest franchise to have some positive news or a big announcement, now would rank highly on the list.  Last week would have been better, as would  the week before, or July, or May, or January, or any number of past dates.  But the past is out of reach. You can’t do anything to change it.  It exists only in memory.

Daybreak will have always said nothing about the next step for the franchise so far this year.

And what has driven me to write a sentence of such dubious tense and logic?

Yes, I am back to the whole The Heroes Journey thing.

Here is reality:  You can believe that THJ is in the wrong for their actions, as I do, and ALSO believe that Daybreak could be doing more to serve their installed base, something which I am also most certainly on board with.

I am at least as often a critic of Daybreak (and SOE before it) as I am a supporter.  Probably more often a critic.  The written record of this blog will support that.  I am that most annoying sort of fan, somebody with a history and fond memories of the early game who can’t really stand the current situation on live.

So while I believe Daybreak is in the right in their legal action… the law and precedent is clearly on Daybreak’s side and THJ team is not some innocent victims being unjustly pursued… that doesn’t mean I can’t also see how tepid the EverQuest annual special server offerings have become.

This whole thing is rife with emotion.  A former MMO blogger even called me out on a past post on the topic.  But they (don’t want to assume pronouns) have spent the last decade working out their emotions on their blog, and it is some messy, raw, unbalanced, and often self-contradictory stuff… as emotions often are.  They seem to be on a mission to make facts care about their feelings, if they bother to acknowledge facts at all, so I will spare you the link to that unreadable mush.

It is sufficient to say that one cannot depend on logic alone to sway fans.  The feelings of fans, logical or not, are part of the equation.

All of which could be seen as a sign, a call to action, or even a cry for help.

Topping the list of my own “feels” is that Daybreak needs to do something.

Even Blizzard, ever the “mommy knows best” corporate overlord when it comes to ignoring fan feedback, knew when they shut down a major WoW Classic emu (remember the Nostalrius drama?) that they had hit a dangerous point for the franchise.  That eventually brought us WoW Classic, which was a great success, something that literally carried the game through the grim Shadowlands era, a situation that proved they couldn’t (or shouldn’t) put all their eggs in the retail basket.

As part of that whole process, they got out there pretty quickly and said they were talking with people and reviewing the possibility, which gave us some hope.  They didn’t even put that much effort into it in hindsight.  But they knew they had a problem and they had to give fans something.

Daybreak is now in a similar, if not identical, situation.  They probably need to do something… which I just wrote two paragraphs back, and will likely write again before I am done because I do believe it.

First off, when they win their lawsuit… and they will, so let’s just get over that bridge before we burn it down… Daybreak should get out a statement how this whole thing has opened their eyes, given them new perspective, and will invite internal discussion or some such.

AND… they have to actually mean it and follow up on it.  Daybreak, like SOE before them, has a long tradition of saying something, presenting a plan, or otherwise doing something to engage their fans, and then letting it sit without further comment, hoping fans will forget or move on or be distracted by something else.

That never happens.  Real fans never forget.  You want some complaints about that sort of thing, you have come to the right place.  I will bring up the time that SOE tried to sell its European players to some German media company for a quick buck, how they screwed up their cash shop, and, as always, the litany of ideas and promises that fell flat from neglect.   I keep the receipts.  (I even wrote an “EverQuest launches to Daybreak gets acquired” timeline that includes a few of their greatest hits… and misses.)

Even that reference to EverQuest 3 up in the title is not some level of wish casting, but based on stuff Acting CEO Ji Ham said.

First party game plans from 2024

Daybreak has once again set some expectation and then quietly walked away from them.  (Also, we should totally be hearing about the “new” H1Z1 by now.  Instead they bought Palia because they haven’t built a new game in-house since they became Daybreak more than a decade back.)

Short of announcing EverQuest 3, which I do not expect, what should they do?

Clearly there is some level of hunger for something different on the special server front.  I even wrote a post about possible options, one of which was a “Tour de Norrath” idea where you could solo your way through ALL of the content and experience the breadth and depth of the game without needing to group up and certainly without any 40+ person raid size requirements.

Daybreak has actually added tech to the game to support things like multiple versions of a zone running in parallel to cover for overcrowding.  And overcrowding would be a problem without it.

The big hurdle is that this sort of thing would require the team to let go of some of their cherished illusions about the game, like being hard or “hardcore” is the point and the attraction.  They have a history of getting stuck behind a mental block of what the game should be.

There is, more than 25 years down the road now, a pretty big player demographic that has fond memories of the game, and would like to have some experience with it, but can no longer (or will no longer) commit to the whole group, guild, and raid thing that has powered the core active fan base for so long.

So I think they ought to do the following:

• Acknowledge the situation, even in some generic or abstract way
• When ready, state the lessons they believe they have learned in a clear way
• Allow for feedback on those lessons, don’t just pronounce then ignore
• Promise more information or a plan at some future date
• Actually follow up and follow through on the plan

None of that has to mention THJ or the EQemu community.  There is likely nothing to be gained with that, especially if it feels like the company taking a victory lap.  There is also little possible upside in thinking you can regain anybody in the “never giving Daybreak money again!” pronouncement crowd.  They’re gone, move on.  It can be something of “listening to the community” update in a producer’s letter when the case is over and done with.

The lessons learned, by comparison, should be pretty specific.  There should be a list of ideas that the company is considering exploring for future special servers.

I do NOT think Daybreak should:

• Copy THJ directly
• Hire anybody from the team that made THJ
• Do anything to disturb the current live server expansion/update cycle
• Imagine that some token effort will close the gap created here
• Ignore the whole thing and move on like it never happened

The first two are kind of pointed at the THJ fans and are a bit of a reality check because those two things are being discussed out there in the community.

That doesn’t mean Daybreak can’t talk with them.  But the THJ crew has, through its actions, already shown its antipathy towards the company.  Also, I have experience without outsiders being introduce to the realities of running live ops with a large, paying customer base and how to keep a sustainable operation going within a set of resource constraints.  That collision with reality is often frustrating in the extreme and the outsider often walks away angry before understanding.

The third is the reality check.  There is a core of players who buy the expansions, play through them and the updates, who stay subscribed and keep things funded and moving forward.  I don’t think Daybreak will jeopardize that, but some fans might start demanding it.

Also, if Daybreak does make a super casual “solo all the things” special rules server, they will have to be very careful how it is pitched, because some percentage of those core players who actually pay the bills will scream bloody murder if the perception is in any way that the company is going to trivialize their achievements by letting scrubs like me go solo Lady Vox or whatever.

I estimate a 100% chance of that coming up in the forums if a server with a casual THJ-like experience is proposed.  The invocation of the sacred phrase, “A slap in the face!” will absolutely occur.  Been through that before.

The thing is, as I keep saying, these are people who actually have subscriptions, buy the expansions, and keep the game going.  Daybreak would be foolish in the extreme to throw over the good will of their most loyal players in order to satisfy the whims of a largely disgruntled group of former players who have already sworn to never give the company another red cent.

Very loud voices in the THJ community have been quite clear on that last point.

So if Daybreak does do something, it likely isn’t going to be exactly what your heart desires.

It is also quite possible Daybreak will completely misunderstand the situation.  This, again, is supported by the history of the team.  For example, last Wednesday morning when THJ shut down they sent out this announcement:

It’s time for XP gains Fangbreaker! Beginning now and running until October 1, 2025 at 10:00 AM PT, we we have double XP for funsies for those playing on our latest TLP! If you have not tried Fangbreaker yet, now is your chance to check out Resource Hunter, Legacy Characters, Encounter Locking, and MORE! 🥳

I mean, cool if you’re already playing on Fangbreaker.  But if they think that will be worth even a pair of fetid dingos kidneys to the THJ fans, they are way, way off base.  This would be the token effort to which I referred.  If this is it… well, at least the players on Fangbreaker got something.

Finally, they should not simply move on like this never happened.  However, for a team running a game that lives on its history, they do tend to pretty blithely ignore big chunks of that history.  So we shall see.

The next moves in the wake of THJ are Daybreak’s to make.

TL;DR – Daybreak could do something with all of this to please some fans, but probably won’t.

Follow on: Then again, sometimes I have to remind myself that people on the forums and on Reddit (and certainly those on blogs) are outliers, a small percentage of vocal users who stay informed about things surrounding the game.  Most players just play the game and, if they get tired of it, move on without comment.  Is this a tempest in a teapot?  Daybreak says it is a big deal in their legal filings, but they might believe something else in their own policy councils.

Related: